Monday, March 31, 2014

Astrologers all over are
flipping out over April 2014. I’ve been
mostly flipping out over the weather lately, since like all humans, most of my
cranial alarm bells are set for whatever is going on in my back yard. And my back yard has been through a lot. Ice,
snow, floods, and any minute, I’m expecting the four horsemen of the apocalypse
to trot on by.

Maybe, too, I’m focused on my
back yard because the larger trends seem so daunting. There’s a palpable sense that some dramatic
historical drama is being set up, that
the forces are aligning for a major change. The T-square is already in place, and edging
closer all the time. Uranus, Pluto and
Jupiter are all in tense aspect to each other, with these aspects exact on
April 20 and 21.

Pluto is about slow,
inexorable transformations, while Uranus is about sudden rebellions and abrupt
turns. Jupiter is about business, economics,
law, principles, and community, and all these things can swing wildly back and
forth. Since it’s currently in Cancer,
Jupiter is also about the homeland, the sense of belonging.

On April 22 and 23, Mars
joins the fray, plugging into the empty space and turning the T-square into a
cross. Mars is the planet of action, the
trigger planet. So this is when people
could reach a moment of resolution. This
could express itself in angry words, flying bullets, or tanks in the
street.

Of course, that’s already
true in Venezuela, as the protests drag on.
My spouse’s aunt says that her neighborhood in San Cristóbal is
desolate, a maze of ripped-up streets.
It used to be that if you saw a gun, you were being mugged, but now the
gunshot in the streets comes from the military, or from the government gangs
that patrol on motorbikes.

Things are tense
everywhere. We’ve already seen Russia
carve off a piece of the Ukraine, abruptly altering the world map. The people in the Crimea have had to figure
out where they belong, as they adjust to this shift in the boundaries of their
world. They are either celebrating a
return to the Russian motherland, or packing everything and bustling the whole family
out the door, or just staying put and feeling anxious and displaced.

And we’ve seen the earth
itself move, in various places. A mountain
lost its grip in Washington state, swallowing most of a small town. There’ve been a bunch of little quakes in
California. Will we see more of this as
these aspects grow stronger in April?

These almost simultaneous
oppositions are very rare, and that’s why astrologers are getting so excited. Especially from April 20 to 23, it’s best to
be a little more cautious than usual, especially if you have any planets close
to 13° of cardinal signs. The U.S. sun
is at 13° Cancer, so, as a nation, we will be affected: our priorities, our sense of identity, our national
ego. Venezuela, with the sun at 12°
Cancer, will also have to redefine itself. And Russia has Uranus at 13° Cancer,
indicating an even more radical shift.

Vladimir Putin has the sun at
13° Libra, so he will be right in the middle of what’s going on. Mars, the trigger planet, is right on his sun
– his leadership, his sense of purpose, his ego. He’s definitely ready for a showdown. Barack Obama has nothing in the sensitive
range of cardinal signs, and is clearly not that interested in mixing it up
with a cowboy, but with Neptune currently opposing his Pluto, some old karmic
power issues are up for him.

When I first looked at
Putin’s chart, especially in terms of the karmic influences, it definitely gave
me pause. He has a Leo conjunction
involving his midheaven, Pluto, the south node, and Black Moon Lilith. And to me, this says that he has a deep
hunger for conquest, left over from a past life in which he didn’t quite get
his chance to run the world. When I see
this, and when I think of the official homophobia and covert anti-Semitism in
Russia, I get nervous.

Adding to the charged
atmosphere this month, there are also two eclipses in April. The first, the total lunar eclipse that goes
along with the full moon on April 15, is the most volatile one, since Mercury
is at 13° Aries, side by side with the fiery planet of change, Uranus. This could mean sudden shifts in intention,
communication, or process. There could
be fighting words, a challenge, an audacious plan.

By the new moon of April 29 –
which brings us an annular solar eclipse – the pattern is dissipating a bit,
and a few Taurus influences help to ground things. Still, the energies of the cardinal cross
and the eclipses will have lasting repercussions. Countries, allegiances, and ideas will be
juggled this month, and this new state of things will comprise our reality for
quite a while.

The cardinal cross indicates
a time when things are being broken down.
We can all agree that some things need to break down, and to be rebuilt
in a better way. But the process itself
is turbulent, scary, and sometimes dangerous.
So it’s time to take a wider view, a historical view. We may all have to look beyond our backyard,
and notice what’s coming down the road.